WTOC, Savannah, Georgia, news, weather and sports | Editorial - 10/26/09
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Making Our Nation Sick (Part 2)
The Senate's latest stab at America's healthcare runs over 15-hundred pages, yet another ridiculously lengthy blizzard of complex legalese, done, again, purposely so. Reminding again that this anti-nation charade has little to do with healthcare and everything to do with another freedom-stealing, federal power-grab, one, you'll recall, that excludes our royally-pampered federal elite, as they prepare to vote for another unwanted, unaffordable cram-down, out of spite. We have a healthcare emergency demanding action at warp-speed, say they, proven false by its delayed 2013 start.
As of now, along with higher costs and taxes, here's what you're facing. All citizens without coverage, personal choice aside, will be forced to purchase health insurance, or face fine or imprisonment. Businesses must provide specified employee coverage, or pay fines. Since fines are cheaper, many or most businesses will be incented to pay up, drop their plans, and dump millions of people onto private insurer rolls at elevated prices, thereafter onto some form of public plan, destined to undercut the private ones, forcing health insurers out of business, by design. Then, as millions more lineup for low-or-no cost coverage, the waits for even basic care will be greatly-lengthened, as demand overwhelms physicians, aggravated even more when doctors depart, rather than become federal pawns. Remaining doctors, load-bearing GP's especially, will be incented, with higher reimbursements, to reduce costly disease-revealing tests and procedures, in turn, driving many specialist-categories out of business through punitive reduced payments. Also due to phantom cost-savings, you can kiss life-saving and bettering, new drugs good-bye, as research labs fold, lacking revenue to off-set costs. For most aliments, then, Doctor Government's treatment preference will, no doubt, call for the return of cod-liver oil and leaches. Seniors will be hardest hit, as will all others with debilitating illnesses, no longer productive, considered a costly burden, and with advanced treatment denied, sent home to die. Should this cost-exploding, bureaucracy-bloating, medical power-grab succeed, welcome back Mr. Darwin's survival of the fittest, joined by the leftist elite, allowed to freely pass go and collect far better healthcare.
